The Sinister Six Could Be Sony and Marvel’s Suicide Squad

September 23, 2015

Victoria

Marvel

When Sony and Marvel first announced that Spider-Man would officially get to be part of the Marvel movies from here on out, fans were curious: what would happen to all of Sony’s plans for a larger Spider-Man cinematic universe?

We don’t have an answer just yet, but given that Sony is going to keep making Spider-Man movies on the side while he’s slinging webs all over the Civil War, it seems like there’s plenty of room for more spin-off movies—which means that Sinister Six, about a iconic team of Spider-Man villains ganging together to take him down all at once, might still have a shot at getting made. Here’s why Sony (and Marvel, of course!) should definitely consider it.

With such an emphasis on supervillains, it would be a great answer to Suicide Squad

While Goddard’s original script still has Spider-Man as its protagonist, a movie that gave so many villainous characters that much screentime would be a refreshing change of pace from Marvel’s usual superhero-centric fare—and would be pretty close to what DC and Warner Bros. have currently got cooking with Suicide Squad.

It would also be a fun way to make fun of Spider-Man’s villain problem—namely that he has so many

After two rounds of movies, we know that too many Spider-Man villains makes for a pretty bad time. Spider-Man 3 had Venom, the Green Goblin and Sandman; The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had the Green Goblin again, with Electro and the Rhino—and both of those movies ultimately disappointed a lot of fans. But a movie where the point was that Spidey’s got baddies practically coming out of his ears? That could break the cycle in the best way possible.

The Sinister Six screenwriter is totally down for more Marvel in his life

Screenwriter Drew Goddard, whose current film, The Martian, is already getting rave reviews, dropped out of being the showrunner for Marvel’s Daredevil series to write the script for Sinister Six when it was still a done deal—but he’s back in the writer’s room for season 2, and he’d love to do more with Marvel’s heroes and villains.

“Maybe a better question is which ones wouldn’t I want to do,” he told MTV News at the Toronto Film Festival. “I want to do all of them. I was a Marvel kid for sure. They’ve been great. I think they sort of know how much I love them and they’ve been very nice to me and it’s all about timing, is this the right fit for this particular moment in time. they know what they’re doing.”

The current script in existence has nothing to do with continuity, so it would be easy to fit in anywhere

In a recent interview with io9, Drew Goddard also said that his vision for the Sinister Six could be its own standalone flick, even with Spider-Man’s recent induction into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“It was just, ‘We take Peter, put him on an adventure, we put him back in his life,’” he said. “I intentionally wanted a movie that didn’t have to worry about mythology and continuity. It was important to me to make a movie that could stand on its own.” And as much as we all love Marvel’s closely tied continuity, isn’t it nice to be able to get away from it all every once in a while? That’s why Guardians Of The Galaxy was such a breath of fresh air, after all.

Let’s face it, Marvel needs more interesting, less formulaic villains in general

Other than Loki and maybe Ultron (and Wilson Fisk, if you count TV) what other Marvel cinematic villains have really captured our imagination thus far? Whiplash? Ronan the accuser?

In fact, it could break the whole formula of Marvel movies in a really interesting way

Marvel is great at what it does when it comes to making fun movies, but they all tend to follow a pretty predictable pattern. First, we meet our hero); then he gets his powers with the help of a pretty love interest, or meets a bunch of other heroes he has to work with; then all of them have to put aside their differences to stop a villain from getting a thing—Tessarect, Pym particle, Orb, access to a Helicarrier, what have you. But if the point of the Sinister Six is that they’re just trying to destroy Spider-Man, that already makes for a pretty big deviation from that pattern.

Maybe Sony will be able to access Marvel’s extensive base of non-Spidey characters and throw any villain they want in there?

As Marvel noted when they first announced the new deal, they and Sony Pictures are “also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films.” Hey, so maybe Wilson Fisk can face off against the friendly neighborhood webslinger? (In the comics he technically started out as a Spidey villain before he had mad beef with Daredevil, after all.) Or maybe Loki could have yet another cameo for us to fawn over? Come on, you know you’d watch that.